Sunday, March 23, 2025

NBC De-Ages Nightly News Anchor as Tom Llamas, 45, Succeeds Popular Lester Holt, 65

Tom Llamas is in as Lester Holt’s successor.

Llamas is taking over as anchor of NBC Nightly News as the network sunsets Lester.

Holt has been very successful, but he’s 65 years old. (He doesn’t look it.) Llamas is 45. He was born in 1979. (I still have a jacket from 1979!)

It’s a young man’s game, you see, and Holt is being sent back to “Dateline” to cover the weekly murder of a young wife or girlfriend by her insane other half.

Llamas was at ABC, hoping David Muir would keel over. But Muir is too young for that, so Llamas came over to NBC and bided his time. He’s the first Cuban American to anchor a network news show.

The result is that he will pick up the torch left behind by people like Huntley and Brinkley. Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, and Holt.

Llamas will start during the summer.

Meantime, CBS Evening News with John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois remains an enigma, trailing way behind ABC and NBC.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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